We Happy Few, We Band Of Wokesters

Assuming the ridiculous gushing over a Cambridge conman was not a national Monty Python sketch arranged for tourists, the Jason Arday affair reminded me of one of the most peculiar things about Britain: They’re more woke than the U.S. Which is weird, because the Mother Country still has a monarchy that rules over tens of millions of white subjects. The closest we have to that in America is the NAACP.

According to the 2021 census, the U.K. is 2.5% black, but more than half of all its TV advertisements feature black people. (That’s even more lopsided than their representation in the country’s homicide statistics, where black Britons make up 24% of all convicted killers.)

You’d never know Britain was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery, then proceeded to use the most powerful navy in the world to end the global slave trade. Black lives mattered to them way before Michael Brown got himself killed in Ferguson, Missouri.